


(Give Me) Your Primal Sanities

by dracusfyre



Series: We Fight Together [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Boats and Ships, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Depression, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Mutual Pining, Panic Attacks, Pre-Slash, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-07-23 19:41:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20013748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracusfyre/pseuds/dracusfyre
Summary: When Tony decided to go on the run with the Winter Soldier, he didn't have a plan other than to get him as far away from the chaos of Project Insight as possible. He knew it was a bad idea. He knew Bucky was potentially a danger to himself and others, and still had no idea how Hydra had turned the thoughtful man who had once saved his life into the ruthless assassin that had threatened to kill him.  But he also knew he wasn't going to let Bucky give himself up and sacrifice himself for something that wasn't his fault.Written for the Winteriron Week prompt "Recovering Together," sequel toOne More LightandOut of Ashes.





	1. Long and Weary My Road Has Been

**Author's Note:**

> Previously published as "The Search," I wasn't happy with it so I have rewritten parts and changed the name. New title is from a Walt Whitman poem, chapter titles from Audioslave.

The streetlights flashed by in a mesmerizing rhythm, making Tony dangerously drowsy as he drove through yet another tiny town on the way to the coast. In the side seat, Bucky did a good job pretending to be asleep; Tony suspected that maybe along the way he had actually slept a couple of times, but right now he was entirely too still and silent to be truly asleep. His back was aching and his eyes were burning, but he didn’t want to stop. He’d tell himself _one more city_ or _the next exit that’s a prime number_ , playing games with himself to make the miles pass. But the truth was that he was afraid to stop because the peace in the car felt fragile. As long as they were driving, he and Bucky could coexist in a liminal state and wouldn’t have to acknowledge the ghosts of his parents that were riding with them or the sociopolitical implosion happening in their metaphorical rear view mirror. As long as they were on the road, everything else could be on pause, especially since Tony had left his old cell phone somewhere in Missouri and hadn’t gotten a new one yet.

But the downside was that Tony felt horribly exposed in the car, since his closest suit was hundreds of miles away and there was no point in contacting JARVIS until they had a plan. Because of this, driving felt both safe and fraught, and the dichotomy between the two was causing Tony’s anxiety to manifest in bizarre ways. He searched through radio stations restlessly, rarely stopping for long enough to play one whole song before moving on to the next. Hands drumming and shifting constantly on the steering wheel. He kept his thoughts busy with absurd mental calculations, like how much carbonated soda would be required to launch this beat up old vehicle to escape velocity and how far up they would get before it vaporized. It was probably a good thing that Bucky was pretending to be asleep, Tony reflected, because he wasn’t sure what would come out of his mouth if he tried to make conversation right now.

They were coming up on Albuquerque, New Mexico when a sudden thought made Tony pull off at the next gas station. He pulled up to a pump and sat for a while, staring into space and listening to the engine hiss and tick as it cooled. He glanced over to see Bucky watching him silently. “All this time we were heading to my home in California, but it occurs to me that’s going to be the first place everyone will look for me,” Tony said, scratching at the stubble on his jaw. “If they know I’m there, I won’t be able to keep them at bay forever. They’ll eventually find you.”

“Only if we stay together,” Bucky pointed out, and an impatient look was all the response Tony felt that statement deserved.

“My point is, we should go somewhere else. Someplace anonymous and as far from DC as possible. Like Alaska.” He climbed out of the car and slammed the door, pulling out his wallet to pay for gas. As he watched the numbers tick up on the pump, he realized he was going to have to ditch his credit cards; they should be cash only from here on out if they were going to make this getaway stick. When the handle on the pump clicked, he closed the gas cap and tapped on the window, jerking his head towards the store to tell Bucky that he was going inside. There was an ATM way in the back, so as he picked up a couple of bottles of water, some gas station sandwiches and a banana a few days past its prime, he withdrew as much cash as the machine would allow.

“Alaska’s too cold,” was Bucky’s only comment when Tony got back in the car. And then, “Want me to drive?”

“Let’s get a hotel for the night,” Tony said as he peeled the banana and made a face at all of the brown spots. “I’m too tired to think right now, and I don’t think I’ve ever said those words in that order before in my life. We can decide in the morning.” A Motel 6 was the closest option and thirty minutes later they were staring at a two bed suite with cheap carpeting and a noisy but effective air conditioner.

They ate the sandwiches silently, sitting on the beds, then took turns showering in the tiny bathroom with its vinyl floor and shower stall barely big enough to turn around in. The pillows were flat, the sheets were rough and the blanket was only a thin shield against the chill of the room, but Tony was so grateful to be horizontal that he barely cared. He did the math and realized they’d been on the road almost non-stop for twenty-four hours, trying to get as far from that Hydra base in West Virginia as possible. Once they turned off the lights, however, sleep was slow in coming. He stared at the lump in the bed next to him, exhaustion a throbbing pain behind his eyelids, and wished, not for the first time, that he could get his brain to shut the fuck up already.

“I still don’t understand why you are so determined to help me,” Bucky eventually said into the cold dimness of the room, the darkness broken by the parking lot lights outside the window. He’d been still as a statue under the covers, making Tony feel self-conscious for having to roll over every five minutes. “After everything.”

“I already told you,” Tony muttered, kicking ineffectually at the bottom of the sheet, which must be glued to the underside of the mattress. “They’re going to be looking for someone to crucify for the mess in DC, and I’m not going to let it be you. Not when it wasn’t your fault.” _Not when I should have saved you after you saved me. Not when I should have noticed something, suspected something was wrong with SHIELD before everything got that far._ Tony threw his arms over his eyes, trying to think of anything except all the ways he fucked up and could have done better.

Bucky was silent for a while before he said, “Have you figured out where we should go?”

Tony rolled over to face him. “I have some ideas. How do you feel about boats?”

The next morning, as they were getting breakfast and going by the bank to withdraw an amount of cash that made the bank teller start sweating, Tony discovered what might be the only working pay phone still in existence. He pulled over and dug out some quarters from the center console and dialed Natasha’s number.

“Tony? Are you calling from a pay phone? ” She said in disbelief. “What are you doing in Albuquerque?”

“I can’t talk long,” Tony said, knowing that SHIELD had strike teams scattered across the country and that Fury wouldn’t hesitate to have him picked up and ferried back to DC. “But I wanted to tell you that I have him.”

Natasha’s long silence said she knew exactly who he was talking about. “ _You_ have _him_?” 

“Yeah. I’m safe, he’s safe, and I am going to keep him that way until Hydra is taken care of. I’m not going to tell you where we’re going, just make sure you pass it around that any attempt to come for either of us without our express permission – and this includes you, Steve, or the goddamn National Guard – will be met with extreme prejudice.”

This time Natasha’s silence – God she was good at saying so much while saying nothing at all – said she had all sorts of questions that she wasn’t going to ask. “Alright,” she said finally. “I’ll handle things here. But I hope you know what you’re doing with him. He’s dangerous, and not just for the reasons you think.” 

“You don’t know what I think,” Tony snapped. He closed his eyes and blew out a breath, taking the handset away from his ear for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said when he brought it back up. “Send me what you have. But there’s a lot more to this story than you know, okay? When I feel like we’re safe, I’ll tell you everything.” 

“You better,” Natasha said sharply but not without humor. “Stay safe.”

“Yep,” Tony said. He heard the click of her disconnecting and hesitated before he put the handset back in the cradle. It had been simple so far to just take each mile and each day at a time, but eventually there was going to be a reckoning for harboring a fugitive, especially one of this caliber. Pepper would say that Bucky needed more help than Tony could provide, and she would be right. Christ, Tony still had therapy appointments of his own - trying to help Bucky would be literally the one-eyed man leading the blind. Rhodey would say that making rash decisions and trying to do this all by himself would only make things harder in the long run, and he would not hesitate to bring up the debris still littering the water at the base of the cliff where Tony’s rebuilt mansion stood. He would also point out that no one knew if Bucky was going to be a danger to himself or to Tony or to anyone else, and he would be right about all of that, too. But Tony couldn’t stop thinking about the resigned way that Bucky had looked at the shattered face of the watch Tony had given him, the defeated way he picked at his food and stared at the ceiling when he should be sleeping, and Tony knew that despite everything he still wasn’t going to let Bucky give himself up.

He went back to the car where Bucky was reading the newspaper they’d swiped from the IHOP and dug out a few more quarters. “Hey JARVIS, it’s me,” he said when he heard the call pick up and make the screeching modem sound from the early days of the internet.

The noise stopped immediately and JARVIS said, “Pleasure to hear from you, sir. How can I help you?”

“Get the Iron Legion ready,” Tony said. “I’m also going to call you back soon and when I do, I’ll need you to reorient one of the comm satellites to my position.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thanks, bud. Talk to you soon.” Tony hung up, blew out a breath, and got back in the car.

“What now?” Bucky said, folding the newspaper and straightening his seat. “And who is Jarvis?”

“You heard that, huh?” Advanced hearing, good to know. “JARVIS is a long story. For now, let’s focus on getting the hell out of Albuquerque.”

***

It was strange how putting actual geographic space between himself and his problems seemed to help, Tony mused, staring out at the endless flat expanse that was southern Idaho. After what felt like a billion miles and many days later, thinking about his parents still left him with an ache of sullen resentment and a desire for justice, but the fire of his initial rage seemed to have burned itself out; maybe it was the desert, with the unbroken sky from horizon to horizon making him and his problems feel small. Or maybe it was the way that being on the road made him feel anonymous. It was easy to pretend, when he was making conversation with yet another small-town waiter or waitress, that his problems belonged to someone else.

The trip didn’t seem to be doing much for Bucky, on the other hand; even after days in the car together, Bucky could rarely look him in the eye and only spoke when he needed to on topics related to their impromptu road trip, his eyes far away and mouth turned down at the corners. At first, it was welcome; Tony needed the silence when fear and anger and anxiety was giving him a stabbing pain behind his left eye and made his neck and shoulders so tight they hurt to touch. Now, though, Tony was starting to admit that he was bored.

“Whoa,” Bucky said, startling Tony out of his thoughts. There was a loud _brrrt_ sound of the tires hitting the rumble strips on the side of the road as Bucky pulled the car over and when he got out Tony did too, following him back to the bridge they just crossed to see what had prompted the surprise stop. 

“Wow,” Tony said, looking down at the oasis below. All around them were flat, brown plains, marked only by scrubby trees and bristly bushes and the occasional boulder, but below them a cobalt-blue river ran through a canyon, a waterfall at the far end creating a rainbow halo in it's cloud of spray. The water meandered through the canyon, growing wide and shallow in parts that were an invitation to swim. The banks of the river were lush with greenery and punctuated by the first buildings Tony had seen for miles, shiny white and sitting like jewels in the trees and flowers below. “It doesn’t even look real.” He scanned the walls of the canyon and found the road down on the far side, zigzagging down the rock wall to the one-lane roads of the small town. 

Beside him, Bucky made a noise of agreement. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and when he did, for the first time since he’d woken up bloody-handed in the Hydra bunker, it seemed like the ever-present tension in his jaw and neck relaxed a little bit. He met Tony’s eyes for a moment and Tony could see that the unexpected beauty of the secret canyon had made a home inside him. The thought made him smile, which Bucky echoed before he ducked his head and they made their way back to the vehicle.

“It’s real symbolic, don’t you think,” Tony commented as he buckled in. “Like, something beautiful can be found in something ugly, or there’s always more to something than it appears. I don’t know. Steve could probably think of something meaningful to say.”

Bucky was quiet as they pulled back onto the road. Tony had given up the conversational gambit as a lost cause when Bucky suddenly muttered, “Steve only gets poetic when it’s about fighting.” 

Tony stared at him as if he couldn’t believe that Bucky had made a joke, but when he saw one corner of Bucky’s mouth curl, he had to laugh. “Does that make you the poet about things that _aren’t_ fighting?”

Tony felt like an ass when Bucky’s smile faded and his brow furrowed, like it had brought up an unpleasant memory. He just opened his mouth to apologize when Bucky said, “Give me solitude - give me nature - give me again, O Nature, your primal sanities. These, demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement, and rack’d by the war-strife;) These to procure, incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart...” Bucky trailed off, less like he couldn’t remember the rest and more like he couldn’t bring himself to speak anymore. Tony stared at him, surprised. Bucky glanced at him quickly and looked away again with a self-conscious shrug. “I don’t know why I remembered that,” he muttered, clearly regretting opening his mouth. “I must have memorized it at some point.”

“In school, probably,” Tony said, looking at him with new eyes. “Sounds like Walt Whitman.”

Bucky shrugged again and clammed up, as if that little bit of conversation was all he could manage for the day, so Tony went back to staring at the desert out the car window until it was his turn to drive.


	2. Millions of Miles Under My Heels

Two days and almost a thousand miles later, they pulled into the parking lot of a small harbor south of Seattle. Bucky climbed out of the car and stretched his back with a sigh, pretty much ready to burn the SUV and shove it down the side of a mountain rather than drive another mile in it. Tony also looked ready to kiss the ground as he all but fell out of the passenger door. 

“So this is it?” Bucky said, slamming the car door closed and eyeing the rows of boats in front of them. Beyond the boats was an expanse of water with a tiny strip of land barely visible on the other side, and surrounding the parking lot were tall, dark fir trees that had replaced scrubby pines about a hundred miles ago. The sound of waves and seagulls and smell of sea salt filled the air; despite himself and despite everything, something in him responded and a tiny bit more of the knot he’d been carrying since he woke up in a bunker in West Virginia relaxed.

“Yeah,” Tony said, squinting against the bright sun. He grabbed the baseball hat and sunglasses from the back seat. “Seller said he’d meet us here in fifteen minutes. You can stay in the car if you want, I’ll handle this.” Bucky nodded and settled back in his seat, watching as Tony took a look around the harbor, wandering up and down the docks as he looked for the boat he was here to buy. When another car pulled up and a white-haired man got out, Bucky watched as the pensive man he’d been riding with for thousands of miles turned on a smile and the charm like flipping a switch. He unconsciously leaned forward in the car, trying to get a better look at that smile. After a few minutes on the dock, they disappeared into one of the boats in the harbor. Bucky stiffened, hands tightening on the steering wheel as his anxiety ratcheted up the longer Tony was out of his line of sight. But before too long they both reappeared, then a check was handed over and an envelope full of papers was handed back. Tony walked the man back to his car, gave him one of those handshakes where he used both hands _and_ clapped the man on the back, then when the car had disappeared down the road Tony waved for Bucky to come out.

“Home sweet home,” Tony said as he led Bucky to the forty foot sailboat he’d just bought. “Sorry, it's a little cramped, but I picked this one because it had two berths,” he said, pointing to tiny rooms the front and back of the boat where Bucky could see beds inside.

“It’s not too cramped,” Bucky said, running his fingers over the shiny wooden cabinets and testing the give on the cushioned seats at the dining table. He had a memory of sharing a small set of rooms before, with Steve, but even though he concentrated he couldn’t remember what they had looked like. “I like it. Cozy.”

“Yeah, you say that now, but wait until we’ve been out to sea for a few weeks,” Tony said. “Then you’ll be crawling up the mast out of boredom.”

There was still a lot to do to make the boat ready to live in, so they climbed back into the car and drove back to the tiny town they’d passed through to get to the harbor. A thrift store supplied them with extra clothes, linen, books, pots and pans and dishes – Bucky couldn’t believe that people had just given all this perfectly good stuff away – and a couple of hours at a laundromat while Tony went grocery shopping made sure that everything was clean and ready to use.

“I think that’s everything,” Tony said finally as Bucky threw their freshly cleaned clothes in the back of the SUV. The sun was going down and Bucky could tell that Tony’s energy was waning, so he offered to drive back to the harbor. Even on the short drive Bucky saw Tony’s eyelids drift closed more than once.

“There’s a shower on the boat,” Tony said, lifting his head and straightening when he heard the crunch of tires on the gravel parking lot of the harbor. “But-“ his words were interrupted by a yawn, and his yawn made Bucky yawn, and that’s when he realized he was pretty tired too. “But there’s also ones here at the dock that are bigger and have more hot water,” he finished, stretching and sighing when his back popped. “I don’t know about you, but I desperately want to shower.”

They emptied the car with two trips and Tony put the food away while Bucky made the beds. He resisted the urge to sit down on one of them because he had the feeling that if he did, he wouldn’t be getting back up again for a while. The sheer stubbornness that had fueled them both for the drive across the country was starting to fail them here at the finish line. He followed Tony to the showers and saw gratefully that they had benches inside the shower stall. Getting clean felt almost as much a spiritual act as a physical one; as he stood under the spray he felt like the warm water was washing away everything, all the miles from DC and softening the memories of what happened there and since.

He realized that he was falling asleep in the shower the second time that he started sliding sideways and got a face full of water, so he turned it off and dried off. The bad part about showering on the docks was that they had to get dressed to walk back to the boat, but once they climbed on board and locked the hatch behind them, Bucky fell down on his bed with a sigh of relief. But despite the soothing rock of the boat and the murmur of waves against the hull, Bucky couldn’t sleep. Maybe the shower had woken him up, or maybe the sheer newness of the boat was hitting all the alarm bells on his instincts, but all he could do was stare out the tiny round window in his ‘room’ and watch the boat next to them bob on the waves. Despite the close walls of the tiny room and his heavy blanket, he felt exposed, vulnerable, and terribly alone. Whenever they had stopped on their road trip, they had shared a room, and he hadn’t realized how comforting Tony's presence had been until it was gone. It occurred to him that the last time he'd been alone, Hydra had come for him, and once he had that thought he knew he wasn't going to be able to sleep. 

Tony’s awareness of the world was sliding pleasantly sideways when a knock on his door pulled him from the edge of sleep.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky said, holding a pillow and blanket, hair still damp from his shower. “But I, uh, can't sleep. Can I…?” He gestured with his pillow and Tony summoned the energy to wave him in.

He opened his eyes a slit when he never felt Bucky’s weight joining him in bed. “Fffuck’s sake, not on the floor,” he said, voice slurring with exhaustion. “I don’t want to step on you if I have to take a leak in the middle of the night. Get up here.”

“Are you sure?” Bucky said dubiously. The beds on this boat were only made for two people if both people were either half of Bucky’s size or _very_ comfortable with each other. “I don’t-“

“Ssshut up.” There was another moment of quiet and then Tony felt the mattress sink as Bucky climbed in. 

“Thank you,” Bucky whispered softly, his body a line of heat against Tony’s back. Tony grunted, or thought he did, right before he let sleep pull him under.

The room was still dark when Tony woke up, no hint of light around the doors or portholes. Tony rolled over, wincing at the fuzzy, dead animal taste of his mouth, and noticed that Bucky was still there. “Jeez, what time is it?” he asked, fumbling for a bottle of water he’d put by his bed last night.

“I don't know. Early." Tony fell back against the pillows with a sigh, shoulders brushing Bucky’s. He was surprised to have slept so long; since DC, his nights have been full of fits and starts, bad dreams and middle of the night wakeups. His bladder wasn’t quite screaming at him yet, so he let himself lay there for a little longer and enjoy the warmth of the blankets and the motion of the boat. He felt Bucky shift next to him and turned his head, barely able to see the outline of Bucky’s features in the darkness but close enough to his face that they were all but breathing the same air. He could feel Bucky’s breath gusting against his lips and he unconsciously licked them.

“Sorry if I woke you up,” he said quietly. Bucky was watching him, eyes glinting, and Tony looked away.

“I’ve been awake for a while,” Bucky answered just as quietly. Tony felt him roll over, their shoulders bumping. 

“You’ve been laying here, awake? You could have gotten up, I doubt I would have noticed.”

Bucky made a noise in the darkness that was the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “So what’s the plan for today?”

Tony blew out a breath as he thought about it. “Breakfast. When the sun comes up, start sailing to Seattle. I need to get a satellite phone so I can get in touch with JARVIS without anyone tracking our signal and you should probably change your look while we’re there, look a little less like the murder hobo that I’m sure is on the FBI’s Most Wanted.” He squinted at the ceiling, trying to imagine Bucky with a different hairstyle. “Maybe a fauxhawk, with highlights. Some piercings. You could go real goth or punk with it.”

“ _Y_ _ou’re_ a punk,” Bucky muttered, elbowing Tony in the side. The bed was small enough that the motion was enough to push Tony to the edge, so Tony shoved him back, laughing when it crammed Bucky back against the bulkhead. He rolled out of the bunk before Bucky could retaliate and hid in the head, closing the flimsy door behind him as he used the toilet and washed his face. 

“This is going to be fine,” he told his reflection. "Just two crazy people voluntarily marooning themselves on a boat to escape the entire national security apparatus and maybe some Nazi-era terrorists bent on world domination." Put like that, the boat part actually sounded sane.

When he came out, Bucky was already in the galley, water boiling in a kettle on the little gas stove as he poured out scoops of coffee into the French press Tony had insisted on buying. Tony sat down next to the fold-down table until Bucky was done, content to watch, since any attempt to join him in the galley would require an amount of full body contact that one should really get enthusiastic consent for. Tony tried to hide his smile as he watched Bucky navigate the galley; it was so small that Bucky's shoulders seemed to take up the entire space and if he stood on his toes his head would probably brush the overhead. 

“Thank you,” Tony said as Bucky handed him a cup of coffee in the oversized, hand-thrown pottery mugs they’d found at the thrift shop. “Let me get at least halfway through this and I’ll make breakfast.”

“No rush.” They were quiet for a long time, watching as the sky got lighter through the portholes, listening as the birds started calling and the other people that lived at the dock started their day. A random thought occurred to Tony and he glanced over to ask Bucky a question, only to notice that staring into his coffee cup like it was the abyss. 

“What’s wrong?” Tony said, nudging Bucky’s bare foot with his own. “You okay?”

“Nothing,” Bucky said, eyes flying up to meet Tony’s. “Just thinking.”

“About?” Bucky hesitated and a look flashed across his face, pained and guilty, and Tony got an idea of what must have been on his mind. He took a long, fortifying swallow of his cooling coffee and put the cup down, running his fingers over the slick bumps and ridges of the glazed cup as he tried to figure out what to say. “Look,” he said finally. “We are going to be on this ship for a while. We also…” Now it was Tony’s turn to stare into his coffee. “I think we got some shit to process, and dancing around each other because we are afraid to be honest is only going to make everything harder. So tell me what you were going to say and if I don’t want to talk about it, I’ll say so. Okay?”

“Okay.” Bucky cleared his throat. “You said earlier that your mother taught you how to sail?”

Tony blinked at him. “Oh,” he said with a huff of surprised laughter. He hadn't realized how tight his shoulders had gotten until they relaxed at the unexpected question. He cradled the cup between his hands and sat back. “Yeah. She was from Sardinia, so until I was about sixteen I would stay with my grandparents when I was on break from boarding school. She would usually spend a few weeks each summer with me, and we sailed around the island all the time in a little catamaran, go swimming and fishing and visiting little towns along the coast.”

“Are you going to teach me?”

“Of course.” Tony drained his cup and stood, reaching into the little refrigerator to get out the eggs. “Can’t do it all by myself, especially if we hit rough weather.”

Breakfast was uncomplicated, thank God, and easy enough to do on autopilot. Tony concentrated on what was right in front of him for now, trying to keep his thoughts from straying into territories that might put a damper on the morning. The silence in the kitchen wasn’t stilted but felt delicate, punctuated as it was by the sizzling of bacon and the scraping of Tony’s spatula. Tony refilled his own coffee mug and topped off Bucky’s, realizing that they had forgotten something when he got out some bread for toast and had to brown it in a pan. 

“Alright,” Tony said when all the dishes were clean and stowed. “Ready for your first lesson?” At Bucky’s nod, he led him out onto the deck, naming off the parts of the boat and teaching him the terminology. As they got ready to shove away from the dock, Tony started to teach Bucky basic knots before he caught his wry look. “Right, yeah, you probably know more about that than me." He handed Bucky the dockline and went to crank up the outboard motor.

“It’s going to take us a few days to get to Seattle,” Tony called out over the wind and the slapping of waves against the hull once they were out in open water. “These things don’t go very fast, but that’s supposed to be part of their charm.”

In spite of the wind whipping strands of hair in his face, Bucky had to agree. It was another unseasonably sunny day, so while Tony was wearing a hat and sunglasses as he steered the boat, Bucky had his face turned up to feel the warmth on his skin. The sea spray was bracing as it misted on his face, the air in his lungs a little chilly as they moved away from land, and Bucky was enjoying every moment of it. He held his flesh hand out towards the water, feeling the sting as the cold water rushed over his fingers. Though they weren’t going fast, the wind was loud enough in his ears to drown out, for a while, the thoughts that had been circling endlessly; it felt like his mind could actually be blown free of cobwebs and bad memories. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this free, skimming over the waves like a bird.

“Feeling like the king of the world, there, Jack?” Tony said, and Bucky glanced back at him with a smile and shrugged. Tony smiled back, easy and open, in that moment seeming uncomplicatedly joyful, and another bit of the knot in Bucky’s chest eased.


	3. Lost in the Pages

The respite lasted until the sun went down. As they found a place to make anchor, far enough off shore that the lights of a town glittered on the horizon, some sort of darkness spread over Bucky’s mood like a storm creeping in. He could tell that Tony noticed, from the sidelong glances and the distinct lack of chatter, but he couldn’t explain what was wrong. It was his turn to make food, but all he could manage was warming up a few cans of soup, and as they ate it felt like the sound of Tony’s spoon against his bowl was going to drive him mad.

“I’m going to get some air,” he finally said, trying and probably failing not to sound as irritated as he was feeling. The cool night air was a relief, the lack of a roof and ceiling giving him room to breathe, but the storm didn’t ease. As he gripped the rails and stared down at the ink-dark water, reflecting the moon in choppy shards of white, the muscles in his shoulders and neck tightened until it was hard to turn his head, until it felt like someone was choking him. He tugged at the neck of his shirt, finally pulling it off completely, but it didn’t help. He slid down to lean against the mast, putting his head between his knees, and struggled to breathe. A breeze caught him and he shivered, fear-sweat cooling on his bare skin, but his brain felt hot, fevered, and his ears were ringing. His thoughts raced around each other like trapped rats, clawing at the inside of his head, scraping him raw; all of the things he couldn’t remember were yawning chasms in his mind, filled with monsters waiting to drag him down. He pressed his hands to his temples, trying to make it stop; he had the wild thought that maybe taking a swim would help and had even started to lurch towards the water when Tony popped his head out of the hatch.

“Bucky, are you- whoa there,” he said, catching him as he lost his balance with the rocking of the boat. He tried to help him sit, but Bucky sagged in his arms until he was curled up on the deck of the boat, trembling like a frightened dog. “Talk to me, Terminator, what’s going on?”

“I feel like I’m having a heart attack,” Bucky managed, pressing his fist against his sternum. “And my head, it...I feel like I can’t breathe.”

“Okay. Okay, you’re going to be fine, Bucky. Just-” Tony pulled off the hoodie he’d thrown on before he’d come up on deck and balled it up under Bucky’s head. “Just breathe, okay? I’ll be right back.” When Bucky made a noise that passed for assent, Tony climbed back down below. It was unlikely that Bucky was having a heart attack, given what he knew about him from the Winter Soldier files, but it was entirely possible that he was having a panic attack. God knew Tony knew them well. He got a washcloth and wet it with cool water and got something for Bucky to drink.

“Hey, I’m back,” he said. He helped Bucky sit up until he was leaning against Tony and passed him a glass of orange juice; the sugar would help once the panic attack eased. “Put this over your eyes,” he said as he handed Bucky the damp washcloth. “And then I’m going to need you to concentrate on me, okay?” Bucky nodded and Tony put an arm around him, settling him more comfortably against his side. “We’re going to do an exercise someone taught me for this. Tell me three things you can hear right now.”

Bucky was silent for so long that Tony nudged him a little, and eventually he said, “Waves. Your voice. Your heartbeat. Sail is…” He waved his hand. “Flapping.”

“Luffing,” Tony said. “I need to finish pulling it in. Okay, that’s good. Name five things you can feel.”

“You,” Bucky said immediately. “You’re warm. Um, the boat is hard and cold. The cloth is damp and cold. The breeze is just cold. Your coat is soft.” He had pulled it around himself while Tony was inside. “The glass of orange juice is making my hand wet.”

“That’s good, that’s really good.” Tony raked Bucky’s hair back from his face where the wet tendrils were sticking to his forehead and cheeks. “How about smells?”

“You smell like coffee and soap. Ocean smells...damp and salty. Orange juice smells like orange.” 

Tony started to breathe easier when Bucky was already sounding more responsive than he was a few minutes ago. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Bucky admitted, and Tony squeezed him with the arm around his shoulders.

“Name four things you can see."

Bucky took the cloth off his eyes and blinked, his eyes glinting in the moonlight as he glanced around. “Moon. Dark sky. Dark water. Lights from town.” Bucky shifted a little against him, radiating warmth in the chilly night, but didn’t make any attempt to pull away. “Lots of stars.”

“Yeah, stargazing is pretty good on the water,” Tony agreed, glancing up. The moon was bright enough that it was turning the few wispy clouds that were drifting across the sky into silver gauze. They rested there for a while, listening to the rustling waves, until a thought occurred to him. “You know, this reminds me of the night we met.”

“On the bridge?”

“Yeah. Sound of the water and everything.” Once he said it, he felt like an idiot. That was probably a terrible reminder for Bucky as he’s recovering from a panic attack, given everything that has happened since then. He blew out a silent breath and let his head fall back against the mast, cursing himself.

“I should have stayed with you that night and made sure you were okay,” Bucky said eventually. “I was being selfish and just left you.”

“No," Tony said without hesitation. "No, you had already saved my life. I should have tried harder to find you.” _If I had, Hydra wouldn’t have found you. Maybe DC wouldn’t have happened._ It was going to be a long time, if ever, before that failure stopped being featured in the parade of mistakes and bad decisions that did the can-can in his mind on bad days.

“I wouldn’t have come with you,” Bucky said. “I probably would have run if I had ever seen you again.”

“I have that effect on people,” Tony said wryly, and was surprised when Bucky pulled away and frowned at him.

“Not because of _you_ ,” he said. “Because…because of Steve. After I found out who you were, and that you knew Steve, I wouldn’t have gone with you.”

“Ah.” Tony drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. “Want to talk about it?”

Bucky finished the orange juice and rolled the empty glass between his hands, staring off at the lights on the horizon. “Not really.”

“Okay.” They sat there for a long time, enjoying the night, before Tony felt his back and knees start protesting. “I’m going back inside,” he said, and Bucky nodded and followed him into the hatch. “You know, I used to have really bad panic attacks too,” Tony said lightly, pretending to study the row of second hand books on the shelf behind the tiny couch that made up their living room. “It helps to not be alone, so if you want to bunk with me again tonight, I don’t mind.”

There was a pause so long that Tony almost grabbed a book at random so he could have an excuse to leave the room, but eventually Bucky said, “Thank you,” before he went to change out of his clammy clothes.

That night, though, sleep did not come easy. He couldn’t stop shifting restlessly, feeling excruciatingly self-conscious as Bucky lay still as a statue next to him. After a minute, Tony didn’t so much as get comfortable as pick a position and stick to it, squeezing his eyes closed as he started naming off elements of the periodic table and their atomic weight.

“Tony, are you still awake?” Bucky whispered in the darkness somewhere around mercury.

Tony opened his eyes and sighed, sitting up and punching his pillow into a different shape. “Yeah. What’s up?”

“Will you tell me about Jarvis now?”

“The man or the machine?”

“JARVIS used to be a _human_?”

“Oh, no, that’s not what I meant.” Tony rolled over onto his back, half lying on Bucky’s arm before he moved it out of the way. “Before I was born, before my parents ever met, Howard hired this guy named Edwin Jarvis…”

***

Bucky woke the next morning with the pleasant feeling of being pressed into the mattress; as he blinked in the first light of dawn, he realized that Tony was lying half on top of him, head on his shoulder and one arm across his chest. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling like he had unexpectedly coaxed a wild animal close enough to touch. He closed his eyes and relaxed back into the bed to enjoy the moment of peace, trying to preserve this memory before the next storm or crisis hit; Tony seemed to think that he could fix everything, fix Bucky and Hydra and what had happened, through sheer force of will, but Bucky had little hope that it would work. They could sail to Hong Kong and it wouldn’t be far enough to escape what he’d done. 

But for now, he could live in this moment, breathe in the clean smell of Tony’s skin mixed with the smell of the ocean, listen to the lapping of the waves against the hull and the far off cries of gulls, and pretend everything was going to be okay. 

***

The next night Tony made an effort to stop a little early so they could dock in a small town instead of on the open water, hoping that a distraction would maybe keep Bucky from having a repeat of the previous night. Turns out there was a local dive bar within walking distance from the harbor, and while Tony grimaced at the idea of greasy bar food, it at least looked like a lively spot. They quickly discovered that the reason for the crowd was the weekly trivia contest, which they promptly entered with perhaps more confidence than was due.

“You’re a genius,” Bucky groused, waving for the bartender to bring him another beer that wouldn’t get him any closer to inebriation but at least tasted better than the beer he had before the war. “We should be doing better than eighth place.”

“Look,” Tony said, pointing a loaded nacho chip at Bucky. “If they were asking for someone to calculate the volume of an irregular solid, that’s one thing. But I couldn’t care less about football.” He put the chip in his mouth. “Besides, I nailed the round with the famous faces,” he said around his mouthful of food. Which was true. Each correct answer was usually followed by at least one anecdote about how Tony had met that person or had watched that person puke in the bushes at some awards show afterparty.

“All I need is a World War II history round and I’ll finally be able to pull my own weight.” Bucky carefully picked the olives off of his side of the nacho plate. “Or Soviet history. Or foreign languages. Or, I don’t know, weapons of the world.”

“Well, that’s the trick to trivia nights,” Tony said as if he went to a lot of them when his total was only three, counting tonight. Rhodey had taken him a few times in college before he got banned from that bar for entirely unfair reasons. “It’s not about having a bunch of smart people, it’s having a bunch of people with a wide range of interests. Let’s just pray the next category isn’t popular TV shows or something.” After this current sports themed travesty of a round, the MC called for a break, so Tony slid off the seat and asked to use the bar’s phone.

“Tony! Where in the hell are you?” Rhodey demanded as soon as he picked up. “Natasha tells me you are taking a sabbatical, whatever the hell _that_ is supposed to mean.”

“It means…look, platypus, remember that story I told you about the guy who found me on the bridge and convinced me not to jump off?” Tony turned his back towards the bar, trying to block some of the noise as the level of conversation rose.

“Yeah. The guy you were convinced was the ghost of James Barnes. Why?”

“Turns out I was right. It _was_ James Barnes. There’s a lot more to that story,” he said, speaking over Rhodey’s shocked “ _what?”_ “But I just wanted to call you and let you know that I’m okay and apologize for not calling earlier. Things have been pretty crazy.”

“I figured as much.”

“How are things with you? You sound tired.”

“Well, yes, Tones. Don’t know if you noticed, but the US government has been a little troubled by this revelation that it has been infiltrated for decades by a secret Nazi organization, so I’ve been a little busy.”

“Oh, man. I guess you would be the point man for a lot of that,” Tony said with a grimace. “But on the plus side, there’s a phone number written on the wall here that promises a good time, so if you want me to give it to you-“

“Yeah, okay, thanks for that Tony. You sure you’re okay? You disappeared in a hurry when those helicarriers started going down.”

Tony reflexively glanced at Bucky, who was keeping a wary eye on a pair of drunks near the bar. “Like I said, there’s a _lot_ more to the story. I’ll tell you when I can.”

“Roger that. Stay safe.”

“Will do.” Tony hung up and reflected on how nice it was to have a friend that trusted him so implicitly before he made his way back to the table in time for the next round to start. When the MC announced that the next topic was geography, Tony and Bucky gave each other a look of smug satisfaction and closed out the night at a respectable third place.

They ended up spending that night at dock, so that they could refill their water tanks, empty the bilge, and take long hot showers. While Tony was waiting for Bucky to finish his, he browsed the little shop there at the harbor that was half a minimart and half a boating supply shop. He stalled out at the little newsstand; even all the way out here in Oysterville, apparently, the mess in DC was making the headlines. Tony could only shudder to think what the NY Post and the other rags were writing.

The next morning was foggy as they set out, the mist muffling the sounds as they motored out of the harbor into the open seas. But about midmorning it started to clear, and Tony called Bucky up from inside the cabin.

“Check it out,” he said, gesturing with his chin.

Bucky turned around and blurted “Holy shit! What is that?”

“Olympic National Park.”

Bucky stumbled the rest of the way out of the hatch and made his way to sit down next to Tony, not wanting to take his eyes off the breathtaking mountain range in front of him. Snow capped mountains seemed to scrape the sky as a cape of dark green swept down the sides all the way to the water. Bucky had, of course, seen mountains before, but the peaks of Russia were sharp and forbidding and the Alps during the war had always seemed sinister and full of hidden dangers. This mountain range, with its blanket of evergreens and sandy beaches, seemed downright inviting, like something out of a fairytale. “Can we go there?” Bucky said, finally pulling his eyes away from the geological majesty in front of him to look at Tony, who was smiling at him like he was watching Bucky open a present.

“According to the map, there’s not a place to put in to the park directly, but after Seattle, I think we can sail around some of the inlets and see if there’s a place to get inside. I picked this region because there are miles and miles of waterways and small towns for us to get lost in, and if we have to, we can hightail it to Canadian waters and try our luck there.”

Bucky spent almost the rest of the day there on deck, trading out the tiller with Tony, still watching the Olympics go by as if he could memorize them, as if he could imprint this feeling of awe on his soul forever. 

The rain came in that evening, so they anchored early and after dinner Tony produced a deck of cards for what was probably the cheatingest game of poker the world had ever seen. Tony was counting the cards with his photographic memory so in retaliation Bucky started palming cards, smuggling them up his sleeves with his metal hand in a show of dexterity that was driving Tony a little crazy.

“If I can find a decent toolkit in Seattle can I open it up?” Tony said as he shuffled. “Your arm?”

“Sure,” Bucky said absently, watching Tony like a hawk. Bucky wasn’t the only one here with clever, lying hands. “I learned how to do a little bit of upkeep on it the first time I got away from Hydra.” As Tony started to deal the cards, Bucky caught his hand, pinning it to the table. “I saw that. Deal from the top, smartass.”

Tony smirked and reshuffled, eyes glinting with mischievous humor and looking so goddamn adorable that Bucky couldn’t help but smile. After they had used up all of their tricks and had resorted to actually playing the game honestly, Tony put the cards away and dug out a radio, eventually finding a classic rock station that they could agree on. As they listened, thought, it wasn’t long before Tony surprised himself by yawning.

“I think on this trip I might catch up on an entire lifetime of missed sleep,” he said with disgust. “It’s barely nine o’clock!”

“Maybe it’s the rain,” Bucky suggested, because the steady drumming on the hull of the ship plus the gentle rocking was making Bucky feel relaxed and sluggish. “Besides, why not sleep? I doubt you’re going to miss anything.”

“I’m _philosophically_ against sleep. It’s a waste of time.” Tony’s scowl was interrupted by another yawn, which then made Bucky yawn.

“Come on, let’s go to bed,” he said. He hit the lights as Tony put the radio away and then headed towards his own bedroom.

“Oh, you’re going to…okay,” Tony said, and Bucky stopped.

“I thought-” he started, and Tony shrugged, turning away to rearrange his blankets.

“It’s fine. Whatever you want.”

Bucky was frozen there in the kitchen, halfway between both bedrooms. He knew what he _wanted -_ to keep sleeping next Tony. When he woke up in the middle of the night, heart pounding from a dream, he liked hearing the rhythmic woosh of Tony’s breathing and the steady thump of his heart. It calmed him, grounded him. He liked when Tony threw an arm over him in the middle of the night, or curled up against his back like he was trying to soak up Bucky’s warmth. He didn’t want to tell Tony that, though. He had vague memories of his mom putting a ticking clock in a towel for a crying puppy and confessing that Tony himself had become Bucky’s security blanket felt ridiculous and childish. This whole time he thought that Tony had just been putting up with it, because that was what he did – he might complain about helping, but help he would, sometimes even before you knew you needed it. “I mean, if you don’t mind…” he finally ventured, dropping his hands when he realized he had been fidgeting with the hem of his shirt.

Tony’s shoulders looked tight as he shrugged again, but when he finally looked up and met Bucky’s gaze, his eyes softened. “I don’t mind. Even if you do take up most of the bed.”

“Lies,” Bucky said, exhaling silently with relief. “I don’t know how someone as small as you can take up so much room while you’re sleeping.

“Small!” Tony protested, of course, and threw a pillow at him, and Bucky suddenly wanted to kiss him so badly it made his breath catch in his lungs. For a long moment Bucky could only stare at Tony, still complaining, like he had stared at the mountains earlier, breathless and awestruck by the feeling in his chest. But unlike the mountains, Tony might actually notice his mute adoration, so Bucky took a deep breath and opened the refrigerator before Tony could see the dopey look on his face. He poured himself a glass of milk and sipped it slowly while he crammed his feelings back in a box.

As Tony brushed his teeth, he gave himself a stern look in the mirror. _Don’t be selfish,_ he told himself. _You’re here to give Bucky space to heal._ It had been so long since he’d been with Pepper that Tony had actually started to forget how much he liked just _sleeping_ with someone else. It was such a casual, undemanding sort of intimacy, to just coexist in the same space without any expectations. He also didn’t like to admit how much he enjoyed feeling the heat of Bucky’s body against his own, resting against his back or side like he was being protected. He’d always been a cuddler but too proud to own up to it, especially to any of his one night stands and definitely not to a therapist, who probably would have said that he wasn’t hugged enough as a child.

It didn’t help that with the rain the temperatures had also started dropping, and there wasn’t a person born that didn’t like getting under warm covers with someone else on a chilly, rainy night. It was also ridiculously romantic, but he tried not to think about that part. “This time, you get to tell the bedtime story,” Tony said as he got in bed. “Since I did it last night.”

“Alright.” Bucky was quiet for a moment while he thought. “You’ll appreciate this. Let me tell you all about how Steve learned to ricochet that damn Frisbee of his without knocking himself unconscious.”


	4. Show Me How To Live

The rain continued through the next morning, so while Tony made breakfast Bucky was at the tiller, steering them around the mountains that were shrouded by the heavy clouds. The rain was making him a little melancholy, but not really in the bad way that made him want to crawl back under the covers and hide from the world. More like in the way where he was content to stay here, bundled up against the weather, and let it rain on his face. The only thing he really needed was something hot to wrap his hands around, and even as he had that thought Tony passed a cup of coffee to him through the hatch.

A movement off to his left – port side, as Tony was trying to get him to say – caught his eye, and he turned his head, narrowing his eyes to catch it again. After a minute, there was more movement – a spray of water, barely visible against the gray, shooting into the sky.

“Tony, come look,” Bucky yelled, knocking on the hatch. When Tony popped his head up, Bucky pointed to where he’d last seen it. “Just wait,” he promised, and prayed it would happen again. He was watching Tony instead of the sea, and he saw the exact moment when Tony saw it.

“Whales!” Tony said with delight. “I wonder what kind they are.” He climbed out and leaned so far over the side of the ship Bucky was one second away from grabbing him by the back of the shirt in case he went overboard.

“Can we go look?”

“We shouldn’t,” Tony said after a long moment where he was clearly thinking about it. “We don’t want to hit them, or for one of them to breach too close and capsize us.” He kept watching until it seemed like the show was over, and then he said, “Shit, the eggs!” And almost tripped going back down the hatch.

Listening to Tony curse as he tried to recover breakfast made Bucky smile and broke his pensive mood. As Tony banged around in the galley, he sipped his coffee, letting its warmth bleed into his flesh hand while water beaded up on the metal one. After a few minutes, Tony tossed the whole pan of eggs overboard and then came back up with two bowls of cereal and a blanket.

“How are you feeling this morning?” Tony asked as they ate.

“Pretty good,” Bucky said. He’d woken up curled around Tony in the misty gray light of dawn, nose buried in his hair, and had five whole minutes of peace before he’d had to move or he would embarrass himself. “You?” He asked belatedly.

“Good. We, uh, should hit Seattle by this afternoon,” he said, and just like that Bucky’s mood hit an iceberg and sank.

“Good,” Bucky echoed, and set his bowl of cereal aside, appetite gone. 

As they sailed into Seattle, Tony could see that Bucky was growing increasingly withdrawn as the lights of the city grew closer. He tried not to show how excited he was to be back in civilization, feeling guilty that he’d started getting cabin fever this morning, antsy and ready to stretch his legs. Jittery, even, and he could tell that his nervous energy was making Bucky’s anxiety worse. Out of mutual, silent agreement Tony took the tiller to steer them into the city while Bucky curled up in his bunk.

“Do you want to see the lochs?” Tony called down to Bucky as he lowered the sails and cranked the offboard motor. “I always enjoy watching the boat elevators.” There was only silence, so Tony said, “We have to go back through them when we leave, so it’s okay.” The lochs led into a canal that fed the lake in the center of the city, so they could park the boat out of the lanes of traffic and be surrounded by the lights and sounds of civilization. Tony was so grateful and ready to get off the boat that he briefly considered swimming to shore.

“Hey, Terminator,” he said, rapping lightly on Bucky’s door. “I know you aren’t feeling so hot, but I need you to drop me off at one of the docks so I can pick up some of the stuff we need, okay? Then you can take the boat back to the middle of the lake and no one will bother you.”

“Okay.” Bucky emerged from the pile of blankets and Tony’s heart squeezed to see how dull and sad Bucky’s eyes looked.

“Maybe if you’re feeling better by this evening we can go see a movie or something,” Tony offered. “Eat food that someone else cooked.”

“Maybe,” Bucky said without much enthusiasm as he followed Tony out the hatch and put the onboard motor in drive. It had stopped raining but it was still really overcast, making the city seem dank and unprepossessing.

“Or I could bring you something. I’ll bring you something,” Tony decided as they drew up to the dock. “You just do you today and I’ll bring you something tasty.”

“Stay safe,” was all Bucky said as Tony stepped onto the dock, and something in his voice made Tony pause. When he caught Bucky’s eyes he finally recognized the look in them: gnawing dread. A deep, abiding fear that wasn’t totally irrational, as his life had proven over and over again.

“Hey, hold on,” he said, grabbing for the boat railing to pull it closer. “Look at me. I’m going to be fine,” he said when Bucky met his eyes again. “I know you’re worried, and I know nothing I can say is really going to change that. But it’s going to be okay. You trust me, right?” Bucky nodded immediately, and Tony blew out a breath. “Then trust me to take care of us for now. There’s no way anyone can know we are here, and I’m not going to do anything stupid.” He waited for Bucky to nod again, and then he said, “When you take the ship back out, make sure you can keep an eye on the dock here for when I get back. I don’t want to be reduced to waving my arms and throwing rocks at the boat trying to get your attention.” That earned him a thin ghost of the smile so he pushed the boat away from the dock and took a step back and watched as Bucky steered it away.

“Alright, Seattle,” he said, rubbing his hands together as he walked down the dock. “Wow me.”

Three hours later, arms full of shopping bags and one hand already full with a delicious smelling strawberry-rhubarb pie, Tony stopped in front of a boutique store selling gourmet cookies and ice cream sandwiches and said, “Okay Seattle, enough wowing. I’m out of hands.”

By the time he got back to Lake Union, the sun was starting to set and the clouds had moved away to the point that the watery orange light was casting deep shadows in the city; street lights and windows were starting to glow, reflecting as glittery stars on the water. Bucky was sitting at the prow of the boat, clearly keeping a lookout for Tony, because Tony had no sooner reached the end of the dock that he heard the sound of the off-board motor roaring to life.

“How are you feeling?” Tony asked as Bucky jumped out and fastened it to the dock to help Tony with his loot.

“Well, I had a panic attack while you were gone,” he admitted, taking the pie and smelling it curiously as Tony carefully stepped aboard. “But it’s still not as bad as that first one, and I managed it all by myself.”

“Oh, that’s great,” Tony said with a smile, elbowing him gently. “Managing your symptoms is really important.”

Bucky ducked his head shyly and helped Tony put away his goodies, listening without comment as Tony explained everything he picked up. When he pulled out the flexible solar panels, he bent them all around in fascination. “Those are for the portable laptop and the satellite phone, so we don’t run down the boat’s battery charging them.”

“Satellite phone?” Bucky said, stomach sinking as he looked at the unassuming box on the table.

Tony put down the plates he had been getting out for the pie and put his hands on Bucky’s shoulders. “I need to be able to contact JARVIS,” he said, looking Bucky in the eyes. “If anyone wants to contact us, they are going to have to go through him, okay? It doesn’t have to change anything.”

“But it does,” Bucky said with dismay. “It…it was just us, and now there’s…” He waved at the city outside the porthole. He sat down heavily at the table. “I’m sorry, I’m being stupid.”

“No, you’re not. I understand,” Tony said after a moment. “I didn’t see it like that.” He sat down next to Bucky and put his hand on Bucky’s, trying to offer comfort as he thought about what Bucky said. “How about I leave it powered off until we need it,” he said finally. “That way it can still be just us.”

Bucky nodded, still unhappy, but Tony couldn’t budge much farther than that. He didn’t want to say it and risk triggering Bucky’s anxiety or another panic attack, but JARVIS was their only backup, their lifeline in case something went wrong. One SOS call to JARVIS and a dozen of his Iron Legion bots would descend on their location in a matter of minutes. What he’d said to Bucky was true; he truly did believe that they were safe in their anonymity here on the far side of the country, but, well, the last time he thought like that he ended up almost getting trapped under the rubble of his own home, so. Better safe than sorry.

“If it makes you feel better, I also got you this,” Tony said, pulling something out of his pocket.

Bucky let out a surprised laugh when he saw it. “An Iron Man switchblade,” he said, shaking his head. The handle was bright red enamel with a raised, blue shape of an arc reactor on it, and when he hit the button for the blade to come out it was a shiny rippled gold. “Subtle. Beautiful, though,” he added, because it was. 

“Yeah, well, I got you _this_ one for subtle,” Tony said, handing him the real gift, a mean matte-black knife with a slight curve to it, leather-wrapped hilt to keep it from getting slippery when wet. “If we get any frogmen coming over the side of the boat, you have my permission to make a mess.”

This one made Bucky speechless. The first blade was beautifully made, but not very sturdy; Bucky doubted it would be able to hold an edge sharp enough to cut cheese much less be useful as a weapon. _This_ knife was an entirely different matter. This was a knife he would have picked for himself. It was versatile, sturdy, and fit in his palm like a dream; not only was he surprised that Tony could pick out something so close to his own taste, but he was shocked that he _would._ He’d killed Tony’s parents, had kidnapped him and held him at gunpoint, had nightmares and panic attacks and was all sorts of fucked in the head, and here Tony was, handing him this deadly little knife like none of that mattered.

“I-” _love you_ , Bucky almost blurted as he took the knife, but managed to stop himself in time. “I love it, thank you.”

“Maybe it will help with the anxiety? I don’t know. Guess it depends on what you are anxious about,” Tony said with a self-conscious shrug as if he hadn’t just said _here, I trust you with my life_ with that one thoughtful gift. And maybe he didn’t know, Bucky realized. Maybe he had already forgiven Bucky so thoroughly that he didn’t realize what the knife might mean to him. “After…well, when I was, you know, kind of where you are now, I built like fifty suits because was just so fucking _worried_ about _everything,_ and then Pepper made me get therapy, and the therapist said ‘your suits are an example of transference and building them is a crutch keeping you from getting better’ but I always thought that crutches were what you used to cope until you get better, right, so anyway I built like twenty more suits before I finally realized it might be a bit much.” He took a deep breath and finally met Bucky’s eyes. “Anyway, if you were worried, like me, I thought it might help you feel safer.”

Bucky turned the knife over in his hands and carefully set it down on the table. He would kill anyone that tried to take that knife from him. “Can I, um…” He blew out a breath and tapped his metal fingers nervously on the table; there was a feeling in his chest that felt like it was going to make him burst at the seams if he didn’t let it out somehow. It was pressing behind his eyes and in his throat, making it hard to speak, so he wordlessly reached out for Tony’s hand, giving him time to move away. When he didn’t, Bucky pulled him closer until he could press his cheek to Tony’s temple, trying to ask without having to force his question around the knot in his throat. Thankfully, Tony understood.

“Oh, you – okay. I got you,” he said, and let go of Bucky’s hand to wrap his arms around him. At the feeling of Tony against him, Bucky’s breath left him in a rush; he put his own arms gingerly around Tony’s shoulders, trying not to squeeze too tightly as the tightness in his throat made it hard to breathe. As he closed his eyes, he could feel the steady thumping of Tony’s heart against his chest, his hands fisting in his shirt as if to keep him close, his breath gusting against his collarbone. Tony felt so strong, so sturdy, so _real,_ that everything else seemed to fade away. They stood there for a long moment, breathing together, swaying with the movement of the boat, before Bucky felt Tony’s hands loosen and took that as a sign to let go.

“Thank you,” he said again. The words felt woefully inadequate to represent everything he was thankful for, but they were all he had. His ridiculous heart wanted to kiss the face that was looking at him so solemnly, maybe press him against the kitchen cabinets or lift him onto the dining table and get closer, as close as two people could get, so that maybe Tony could feel the gratitude coming through his skin. Instead, though, he just took a step back, looking away as if that would lessen the temptation.

“You’re welcome.” A passing motorboat sent up a wake that jostled the boat, and as they grabbed the counters for balance, Tony blinked and looked at the clutter from his shopping trip as if he’d forgotten it was there. “I’m going to hook up these solar panels while it’s still daylight,” he said vaguely, as if his mind were elsewhere. “And see if the satphone has a charge. I really should call and check up on people.”

“Need any help?”

“No, I got it.” He visibly shook himself and stood up straighter. “And I got a tool kit, so we can take a look at your arm tonight. Okay?”

“Sure.” While Tony ferried all of the panels and tools and everything to the deck, Bucky busied himself with putting away the food and planning dinner, leaving the knife on the table so he could keep it in sight.

As he climbed out of the hatch and closed it gently behind him, Tony turned and banged his head gently on the mast, trying to knock some sense into himself. “Don’t read too much into it, Tony,” he muttered to himself as he sat down and started spreading everything out. After a moment his hands stilled and he rubbed his eyes, as if trying to physically push the hug into the same box that he kept the midnight cuddles and the easy early mornings over coffee. “And for the love of God, don’t make it weird.” 

Setting up the solar panel was easy enough, designed as it was for the layman to install, and he managed to resist the urge to tinker with them for now. Instead, he powered up the satphone and went through the required setup phase, then called JARVIS. He had JARVIS delete any voicemails or emails that weren’t from Pepper or Rhodey and had him send those to his phone to review.

“Hey buddy, can you patch me through to Natasha?” he asked, confident that JARVIS would bounce the signal around the globe enough times that no one would be able to track where it originated.

And sure enough, when Natasha answered, she said, “Somehow I doubt you’re in Hong Kong,” she said dryly. “But I’m glad to know you’re still alive.”

“Yeah, I think things are going well. No stabbing or psychotic breaks.” He hadn’t _really_ been worried about that, but in one of his own anxious moments, holding the tiller one day and watching as mist shrouded the shore, he had wondered what exactly he would do if Bucky went to sleep and the Winter Soldier woke up. “So how are things?”

“About how you would expect,” she answered, which Tony took to mean ‘it could be worse’ with a side of ‘but I still want to kill someone.’ “About that information on your boy, though,” she added. “You should really look at it sooner rather than later.”

“Is it directly related to our health or safety? Because if it’s not-”

“It is,” Natasha said. “It really is.”

“Of course it is,” Tony sighed. “Because nothing is easy. Okay, send it to JARVIS and he can get it to me. How’s Steve?”

“Out of the hospital and going out of his mind,” Natasha said. “He wants to speak to Barnes.”

“Um…” Tony looked reflexively at the hatch as if saying Bucky’s name would summon him. “Look, I don’t think it’s a good idea-”

“Tony,” Natasha said sternly, and Tony blew out a breath.

“I’ll ask.”

“Please do. I think he’ll only accept a no if it comes from him.”

“Hold on.” Tony muted the call and opened the hatch. “Bucky, Steve wants to talk to you.”

At the long, conspicuous silence, Tony said, “It’s okay to say no.” When Bucky appeared, shoulders tight and eyes shadowed, Tony offered, “Or you can say not right now. Give yourself time to get used to the idea.”

“Not right now,” Bucky said, and Tony said as much to Natasha, who sighed.

“Okay. I’ll tell him. But he’ll be glad to know that he’s okay.”

“Yeah, he’s okay,” Tony said, looking into Bucky’s eyes. Bucky grimaced and made a sign with his hand, like _so-so,_ and Tony made a face at him and turned away, gesturing for Bucky go back to making dinner.

“Alright. Stay safe.” 

“You, too,” Tony said, and hung up. He tapped the phone and watched as the last rays of the sun burnished the bottoms of the high, thin clouds over the city, the distant sounds of the city competing with the gentle waves of the lake. His phone buzzed with the incoming files Natasha had mentioned, and he stared at them, listening to Bucky down below as he cooked. His thumb hovered over the download icon; _health and safety_ , Natasha had said, which meant he should read it, but when he did, he’d have to tell Bucky, and he really, _really_ didn’t want to be the bearer of any more bad news. 

With a sigh, he turned off the phone and put it in his pocket. Bucky’s files, Bucky’s decision. Now he just needed a good time to bring it up.


	5. Fell on Black Days

Tony decided to wait until they were away from Seattle to bring up the issue of the files. Not only was Bucky less anxious when they were at sea, but if there was anything in there that Bucky...well, that would make everything go sideways, it would be best if Buck were away from a large population center.

The next day Bucky sat on deck with Tony as they went back through the locks, watching with interest as the gates closed and the compartments filled with water, lifting the boats inside to the level of the water on the other side. They had to wind their way carefully through a narrow, crowded busy channel, but soon enough they were back out in the open water, wind filling their sails and heading back towards the Olympic mountains scraping the sky to the south and west. 

They sailed until they were in the shadow of the mountains, close enough that they had to crane their necks to see the tops of the mountains. As they bobbed on the waves, eating a frozen pizza that had barely fit into their tiny onboard oven, Tony tried not to think about the files, uncomfortably aware that he was putting off the conversation for his own sake as much as Bucky’s. 

The thought weighed on his mind as it got too dark and chilly to sit outside; they went inside and as Bucky sat down with one of his new books, Tony pulled out the laptop, smoothing his hands over it's lid and biting his lip as he thought. 

“Look, there’s something we need to talk about,” he said finally. “It’s about...it’s about Hydra. And you.” He met Bucky’s eyes and hated himself at how Bucky’s face fell. 

“The Winter Soldier files,” he guessed, eyes searching Tony's face before they dropped down to stare at the laptop, his voice remote as he closed his book. Tony winced; he hadn’t heard that tone in his voice in a while. 

“I guess so, yeah.” Tony flattened his hands on the laptop. “Natasha said it was important to your health and safety, or else I wouldn't...well. But it’s up to you if you want to read them, or if you want me to read them so you don’t have to.” 

Silence filled the boat, heavy and awkward; Bucky’s jaw worked as he stared at the laptop, hands in his lap. “I don’t want _anyone_ to read it,” he finally gritted out, and Tony’s heart ached.

“I understand,” he said. “I do. After...well, people wanted me to talk about what happened in Afghanistan. What they did, what I did. Questions about this,” he said, tapping the arc reactor, it's blue glow barely visible through the dark shirt. “So many questions but I didn’t want to talk about it. I still don’t. I just want to pretend like it didn’t happen and go on with life. But then this thing started to kill me and I had to stop pretending.” Tony took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “If there’s something in these files that could help you, or something that someone can use against you, we need to know. Okay?” He opened the lid to the laptop but didn’t power it on until he got Bucky’s reluctant nod. “I know you are afraid of what’s in here,” he said gently. “But - and I don’t mean to be a dick - what could be worse than what I already know?” 

Bucky’s smile at that was bleak and humorless. “I don’t know. That’s the problem.”

“I don’t have to read it if you don’t want me to.” Tony started to turn the laptop towards Bucky as the screen lit up but Bucky stopped him. 

“I’ll read it one day just...not today.” He pushed the laptop towards Tony. “You do it.” 

“Okay.” As Tony downloaded the files, Bucky picked up his book again, but he was barely turning the pages as Tony read through the files, skimming past the stomach churning medical documents detailing the surgeries that had been required to attach the arm but forcing himself to read everything else, even when he had to take a break to stare in awe at the man across from him who survived all of this.

He was starting to wonder what Natasha had thought was so damn important when suddenly the language switched from German to Russian. “Dammit,” he muttered to himself, trying to remember what he used to know about Russian grammar. He sighed as he scrolled down to see how many pages there were; even with Google translate it was going to take forever. He wondered if Natasha had deliberately sent him the untranslated files as punishment. “I don’t understand,” he said, mostly to himself but Bucky glanced up from his book anyway. “This part right here seems to be referring to firearms, but nothing on the rest of the page has anything to do with that," he said, pointing at a part of the screen. "And right down here they mention Sputnik, but that’s a space- Bucky?” He caught a strange movement out of the corner of his eye and then fell against the oven as he tried to clamber out of his seat and catch Bucky as his eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp. “ _Bucky!_ ”


	6. Light My Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: nongraphic suicide ideation by drowning. If you want to skip past it, go to the page break represented by ***

Bucky woke up to Tony shouting right above him. “Well how do I fix it? The fucking files don’t say _anything_ about how to-” He stopped abruptly when he saw Bucky’s eyes blinking open. “Never mind, he’s awake,” he snapped into the phone and then tossed it across the cabin onto the couch. “Hey, Bucky, thank God. Are you okay?”

Bucky realized he was laying on the narrow strip of floor that divided the kitchen and the dining room, head cradled in Tony’s lap. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I was just reading something from the file and you passed out. One minute you were sitting across from me, the next you were on the floor.”

Right, Bucky remembered now; he'd been trying to concentrate on reading, despite being acutely aware of every muttered word and shift in Tony's expression, when something Tony said flipped a switch in his brain. The next thing he knew he was staring up at the ceiling of their boat. "Fuck," he muttered. He curled onto his side as much as he could in the space and buried his face against Tony’s thigh. “It must have been from the book.” _The_ book, the one that was the Soldier's beginning and Bucky's ending, the book that never gave, only took away. Clearly Bucky could never run far enough to be free of the Book.

“It was some scanned pages, so it could have come from a book. What book are you talking about?” Tony’s hand came down to cradle the back of Bucky’s head, the other rubbing up and down Bucky’s arm. 

The memory of the book flashed in Bucky’s mind, crimson leather with a star on the cover. He couldn’t find the words to explain, so he just shook his head. Tony was silent for a while and Bucky could practically hear Tony's mind churning as he put everything together. When Bucky had said that the Winter Soldier was still there, waiting under his skin and behind his eyes, he'd known then that Tony hadn’t known how serious he’d been. And now the Soldier was trying to come back; Bucky could feel it in the ringing in his ears and the way his vision was gray at the edges when he opened his eyes. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Tony said softly after a moment, and Bucky felt queasy. Tony knew everything, knew what Hydra had done to him, what Hydra had made him into. Bucky shook his head and curled tighter around him. “Do you want to come to bed?” Tony tried next, but Bucky shook his head again. He couldn’t look at Tony right now; he felt anger and could taste gritty self-loathing on his tongue, wanted to scream at the injustice of it all, but all of those feelings were like an oily slick on top of an ocean of numbing despair. It was filling him, like a tide, and the rage and hate were clogging his throat and pressing at his eyes and making his hands ball into fists and he just wanted to _hit_ something or bite or claw, anything to relieve the pressure, but Tony was sitting there, watching him with concern in his eyes.

“I need some air,” he forced out, and he climbed to his feet and fumbled for the hatch to go out on deck. He closed it firmly behind him and stumbled towards the railing, falling to his knees when it suddenly seemed like too much work to stand. His breath was harsh and rapid and his jaw ached from the effort of holding back a scream; but if he started he didn't know how he would stop, so he just bit his tongue bloody and raked his fingers through his hair until his scalp stung. In front of him, the ocean was an inky black, bleeding into the night sky; staring at it, eyes burning, Bucky imagined slipping into it, feeling the cold sinking into his skin and leaving numbness in it's wake, the water muffling his rage as he sank to the bottom, Hydra’s arm dragging him down and down and down into the darkness. He remembered now, the chair, the words, and each time it had felt like drowning, but without the relief he imagined actual drowning would bring, only more pain as he surfaced and realized what he’d done. The lure of the water had always terrified him because he knew how easy it would be to let the restless sea fill his lungs and close over his head and cleanse him from the inside out forever and ever, amen. 

“Stop,” Tony said, voice low and commanding, and that was when Bucky realized he’d been reaching for the water.

“Why?” Bucky used the railing to pull himself to his feet, still staring at the lapping waves. 

“Because it will get better,” Tony said. He was watching Bucky intently, every line of his body tense, and Bucky knew that if he went into the water, Tony would too. “It’s _been_ better, right? With the mountains and the - the whales and trivia night and...everything. It will be good again, I promise. Then it will probably be bad again, but then it will get good again, then eventually the bad will less bad and the good will get better.” Tony took a deep breath and held out his hand, fingers curling for Bucky to come closer, away from the darkness and back into the warm light of the cabin. “First, let's get some sleep, yeah? Things always tend to seem better in the morning."

Bucky bowed his head. He knew he couldn't do anything under the weight of Tony's steady gaze, so after a moment Bucky took a step towards the hatch, then another, until he was following Tony back into the cabin. Tony urged him towards the bedroom, and tugged on the hem of Bucky’s shirt. “It’s damp,” he pointed out, and Bucky pulled it off without argument. His pants were next, soaked at the bottom from kneeling on the deck, until Bucky was standing there in his boxers, skin pebbled from the cold. Tony quickly stripped to his boxers as well, deciding they would pass on the pajamas for one night, and climbed into bed. “Come on,” he said, holding the blankets open for Bucky to climb inside. “I’ll be the big spoon this time.”

Bucky climbed in without protest, barely moving as Tony pulled the blanket over him and crammed a pillow under his head. It took Tony a little while to get situated, but eventually he figured out a position that allowed him to curl protectively around Bucky and still be comfortable. He put his arm around Bucky’s chest, holding him tight as he buried his face into the back of Bucky’s neck, breathing in the smell of sea salt and shampoo. Bucky’s skin was cold against his but warmed quickly, his heartbeat slow and steady under Tony’s palm. 

“I don’t know if now’s a good time to say this,” he murmured into the soft darkness, lips brushing against the fine hairs at Bucky’s nape. “But I think I know a way to help you. To fix what Hydra did.” He felt Bucky go still against him, his breath catching before he let it out slowly. “We can talk about it whenever you’re ready,” Tony said after a long moment when Bucky didn’t say anything. “I just need you to stick around and give me a chance, okay?” Bucky still didn’t answer, but he shifted closer, pressing back against Tony as if greedy for the contact. Tony’s heart ached and his arm tightened; he wished there was more he could do to help, to make up for decades of suffering and to let Bucky know that he didn’t have to be alone anymore. 

Squeezing his eyes tight, Tony took in a shaky breath and let it out slowly, forcing those thoughts away. When he’d been thinking of the pitfalls to this particular half-baked plan, the idea that he might get too attached hadn’t even occurred to him. But here he was, hiding on a boat on the fringes of the Pacific Ocean trying not to admit that he already cared about Bucky way more than he should. 

With another silent sigh, he shoved those thoughts away too, and concentrated on reciting the digits of pi until he felt Bucky’s tension seep away into the slackness of sleep and then fell asleep himself. 

***

Bucky woke suddenly, like he always did, snapping from unconsciousness to completely aware in seconds. Just as quickly, however, he realized what had woken him up and he forced his body to relax. He opened his eyes and blinked in confusion when he realized it was still dark. 

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Tony said, as if he hadn’t been the one to wake Bucky up by gently prodding him in the side. He propped himself up on one arm as Bucky rolled over onto his back to scowl at him in the darkness. “Let’s get dressed, I have an idea.”

“What time is it?” Bucky asked, barely shifting as Tony crawled over him to get out of bed.

“I don’t know,” Tony said thoughtfully, leaning over to look out the porthole. “Early.”

“Then why are you awake?” Bucky watched Tony fumbling in the dark for some clothes and knew that the likelihood that Tony was going to come back to bed was nil. He burrowed deeper into the bed in protest. The memory of last night was hovering at the edges of his thoughts and Bucky was trying hard not to let it pull him down again; going back to sleep again would put off the fight for a few more hours.

“A dream woke me up and then I couldn’t go back to sleep.” _Not my problem,_ Bucky thought, pulling the blankets tighter around himself. With an amused huff, Tony tried to pull the blankets away, only to give up when he realized that Bucky wasn’t budging. Instead, Tony deployed the nuclear option: he sat down on the bed, put one hand on Bucky’s shoulder, and said, “Please?” with what Bucky knew would be an earnest look on his face, if it wasn’t so goddamn dark that even Bucky could barely see. 

“Goddammit,” Bucky sighed. “Hand me my clothes.”

“Tony, what in the hell are we doing?” Bucky asked an hour later, watching his footing on the rocky trail as Tony’s flashlight bobbed and weaved in front of him.

“Ssshhh,” Tony hissed. “Technically the park’s still closed.”

Bucky heaved a sigh to let Tony know what he thought about climbing out of bed at ass o’clock in the morning to illicitly climb a mountain but didn’t say anything else. Mostly because he could hear Tony grumbling under his breath as he navigated the uneven surface of the trail, the tangle of roots and rocks that periodically tripped him up despite his best efforts. When they cleared the tree line, Tony looked at the rest of the trail, which cut steep switchbacks up the side of the mountain, and huffed out a breath. “This seemed like a much better idea on the boat,” he complained, but only stopped long enough for a drink of water before he set off again. The sky was starting to lighten, stars disappearing as the deep blue sky paled, when Tony finally stopped.

“Good enough,” he said, dropping the bag with the water in it and finding a giant boulder by the side of the trail to sit on. He patted it invitingly for Bucky to join him. “Come on, the show’s about to start.”

Bucky obediently sat, and as he looked out over the rest of the national park, he had to admit that the view was absolutely breathtaking. The sun was just starting to bathe the world in light, limning the mountains and forests in pale gold and casting stark shadows in the valleys. This high up, there were no sounds, no birds calling or animals scurrying through the underbrush, just the sound of Tony’s breathing, the thumps of his heart, and the soft sounds of gravel crunching under their feet. They watched in silence for long minutes as the the sun edged over the horizon and the sky shifted from thin yellow to a rosy orange. Bucky took long, deep breaths as they sat, enjoying the way the cool air chilled his lungs and turned his breath into a fog. In contrast to the mountain air and cold rock underneath him, Tony was a line of inviting warmth at his side, making him want to move closer. For his part, Tony seemed happy to sit in silence, willing to let the view speak for itself. He didn't need to explain why they were here, because Bucky had understood as soon as he had seen the first day of dawn. 

“Everything the light touches is our kingdom, Simba,” Tony said suddenly, breaking the contemplative silence, and when Bucky looked at him in confusion Tony grimaced apologetically. “I’m sorry, I know I ruined the moment, I just couldn’t resi-”

“I love you,” Bucky blurted, then winced when he realized what he’d said. The feeling had welled up so quickly as he looked at Tony in the light of a new day that he hadn’t had any defense against it; it had spilled out of him as inexorably as the sun rise. 

Tony blinked, clearly stunned, and his mouth opened and closed a few times as he struggled for words. Bucky swallowed an instinctive apology as he watched emotions flash across Tony’s face, almost - but not quite - too fast for Bucky to follow. “Well, naturally,” Tony said eventually, glancing away to study the mountains, voice full of forced lightness. “I _am_ pretty loveable.”

Bucky put a hand on Tony’s where it was fisted in the hem of his sweatshirt. “I mean it,” he said, catching Tony’s eyes. “You don’t have to answer, or - or - I mean, I don’t have any expectations. I just wanted you to know. It’s not gratitude, or loneliness. It’s you, and it just _is,_ so...yeah. I know right now I’m not...” _Sane,_ his brain supplied. _Safe. In any way good for you._ With an effort Bucky pushed those thoughts away. “But if you say you think I can get better, I believe you. And maybe one day, without Hydra or SHIELD or anything else hanging over us, I can take you out on a date.” 

Tony glanced down at their hands, jaw working, then after a long moment he turned his palm up so he could lace his fingers through Bucky’s. He put his other hand into his pocket and pulled out something that reflected brightly in the morning light. “I had this fixed while we were in Seattle,” he said softly as he handed it over. 

Bucky took it and had to blink rapidly as his vision blurred. He ran his thumb over the smooth, unbroken glass of the watch face, heard the minute ticking of the gears as the hands swept around the face. He flipped it over and saw that Tony had even had the inscription changed. Bucky had memorized the old one a long time ago - “Thank God it wasn’t your time,” whatever that meant, given that Tony had said it came from a man who had tried to kill him more than once. This time, though, the shiny metal of the back said “The future is ours to write.” Bucky swallowed against the knot in his throat and said, “Tony, I-”

“I’m not very good at people,” Tony said in a rush, hand tightening on Bucky’s as if he was afraid Bucky was going to pull away. “I mean, you know, relationships. I have trust issues and I can be selfish and thoughtless and-”

“You don’t have to be scared, Tony,” Bucky said softly. He raised their linked hands and kissed the back of Tony’s, then turned it over to kiss the inside of his wrist. “I don’t want more from you than you can give. Than you _want_ to give. Because you’ve already given me so much.”

Tony's face twisted, like he wanted to argue, but Bucky cut off whatever he was going to say by scooting closer and putting his arm around Tony, kissing his temple in a fit of daring. For a while Tony sat stiffly next to him, like he couldn't believe this was happening, but as they watched the sun slowly climb into the sky and pour its light down the slopes of the mountains into the thickly wooded valleys, he slowly relaxed until he was leaning against Bucky's side. 

"I think we should go back to DC," Bucky said eventually, once the sky had settled into the endless blue of day. 

"Are you sure?" Tony asked, pulling away from Bucky's side as he straightened and stretched from sitting for so long.

"No," Bucky admitted as he stood. On this sun-drenched mountain it was easy to feel like the darkness was far away, but Bucky knew better. He felt a sudden stab of fear at the prospect of more nights like last night, but the feel of Tony's hand sliding into his own kept him from spiraling.

"We can take the long way back," Tony said. "We will get there when we're ready."


End file.
